Chauvelin
by SadArticle
Summary: Does exactly what it says on the tin: a study of Orczy's equally enigmatic villain, told from his own perspective. Based on 'The Scarlet Pimpernel' novel. Please review! Final chapter now up.
1. Marguerite

_This study in sable begins just after the chapter 'Doubt' in _The Scarlet Pimpernel,_ when Chauvelin bids farewell to Lady Blakeney at Lord Grenville's ball, and is my version of what memories and desires really drive the accredited agent. It's not a story, just a perspective_. _Thanks to Kate and Liz, each a beta-extraordinaire and both fellow fans of Orczy's characters._

Closing his eyes against the gloom of the carriage to better recall the delicious memory, he heard again that low, musical voice pleading with him: "Give me some hope, my little Chauvelin." He saw Marguerite St Just, a vision in rich gold wearing with careless grace her new role of the noble Lady Blakeney, holding out to him a small, white hand: reaching out for mercy. And he had taken that hand because it was the proper thing to do, and Armand, _ci-devant_ Marquis de Chauvelin had sacrificed none of his diplomacy in his zeal for a republican France; he had taken that dainty hand and pressed his lips to the trembling fingertips.

And then, before his gently ironical smile could betray the excitement and mocking amusement building within him, Chauvelin had dismissed the beautiful woman before him without allaying her fears: "Pray heaven that the thread may not snap."

With a final, searching glance over her shoulder, she had then been caught up in a wave of her own popularity, as men of all ages and stations vied to offer her their arm and accompany her to her husband's waiting coach. Chauvelin was accustomed to this repetitive and rather nauseating sight, from the days when he had known _citoyenne_ St Just in Paris; he recognised in these lords and ministers of London society the same breed of men which had once consisted of playwrights and patrons, noblemen and _bourgeois_ merchants – even leaders of the burgeoning Republic. Men of every level of background, wealth and standing, reduced as one to simpering fools before the shimmering beauty of Marguerite St Just.

Alone with his thoughts as he returned to his lodgings, Chauvelin mused over how her allure was certainly greater as Lady Blakeney, wife of one of the richest men in England, and leader of fashionable society. Yet it wasn't material advantage that had honed her charm, he thought: it was a certain _maturity_ she seemed to have acquired, based, he had intuited, in unhappiness. Marriage had brought the glorious Marguerite crashing down to earth, and now she was all the more fascinating in her uncertainty.

As a shadow in the corners of her apartment on the Rue de Richelieu, haunting her little circle of the great and the glorious, Chauvelin had found the young Marguerite St Just to be artificial – beautiful, yes, but her appearance in his eyes had been marred by her awareness of her own charms. Her whole life had seemed to him a continuation of her work on the stage, always playing to an audience until her outward personality had become merely another role.

He had attended her court only because other influential men had done so, using the rooms she shared with her brother as a meeting place in those early years of the tumult in Paris. 'My little Chauvelin', she called him then, playing the coquette with the ambassador as she appeared to hang on his sparse but weighty words. He would feel the light touch of her small hand upon his arm, inhale the warm scent of her perfume, and know that her large eyes were studying his expression, watching his lips move. If his contribution to the debate was applauded by the others, she would beam at him; if met with hesitation or hotly contradicted, a gentle pressure on his arm would be his solace.

With hindsight, Chauvelin prided himself on having been able to see past the autumnal shades of her hair and the liquid quality of her blue eyes, where wiser men had fallen under her mesmerising charms. He had observed her offer the same friendship, attention and flattery to figures who might soon rule the country – including her own cousin, Louis-Antoine St Just – before smoothly placing herself beyond reach of any stronger advances. Chauvelin had been galled, but also intrigued, by the young woman.

And now they were together again in London: he the representative of a republican government loathed by a country still loyal to its king, she the leader of aristocratic society in a foreign land. Upon finally locating her in England, Chauvelin had been pleased to note that _citoyenne_ St Just, as he still thought of her, had not lost her skill of entrancing men and inspiring women: there she was, a French, theoretically republican, former _actress_, newly married into English society – yet everybody loved her! And, until he had listened harder, picking up on a few whispered insinuations about the mental health of the Blakeney family and the 'talents' of the new lady of the manor, Chauvelin had actually been in awe of this daughter of the republic.

Then he had realised that, as in France, her charm had a limited range, and when the charming _citoyenne_ was not there to dazzle and entertain, her admirers were able to remember that she was only human. Without her large blue eyes holding their gaze, or her salon wit to amuse them, her power was lost. She became a usurper – a foreigner, a player, a threat. So she was attractive – isn't that after all why Sir Percy must have married her? He had thought Blakeney to be just another fool with too much money and not enough sense – it was apparently well known that he was none too bright – and she a very experienced actress from the French stage: Blakeney's thoroughly English _noblesse oblige_ had probably made him offer marriage where others before him had escaped such a hefty toll.

All this and more had Chauvelin heard about the new Lady Blakeney, when he had actually taken the trouble to listen. And it had been with such a dossier that he had confronted her in Dover, letting her imperiously mock and then turn away from him, but his power over her had grown little by little, until now he held her completely, about to betray her husband to save her brother. The unsuspecting dupe! She was completely unaware of the gravity of her actions, which was the beauty of the situation – but also the disappointment – for Chauvelin. She couldn't know, because, as he himself had been up until the meeting in Grenville's dining room, Lady Blakeney was also ignorant of her husband's secret. She thought she had fulfilled her side of the bargain, _maybe_, but she didn't know what that entailed, or whom Chauvelin had encountered on the basis of her betrayal. The innocently hopeful look on her face, her conspiratorial whispers on the staircase, her trust in him to do right by her brother – and all the time … Chauvelin bit down on his lower lip in a private, twisted sneer of amusement. The irony appealed to him – Lady Blakeney had just satisfied the worst of the rumours about her marriage, and handed her golden prize over to the enemy.

As his coachman navigated the narrow streets of the city, Chauvelin remembered Lady Blakeney's earlier defiant speech to him, and how he had taken her words at their petty value: "we ladies think of him as a hero of old … we worship him … we wear his badge …" She had meant to show him, as she stood beside her appreciative Prince, that not even Armand Chauvelin could trouble her now; she was above judgment and beyond scorn. But without her husband, what then?


	2. Desgas

Desgas, his gruff assistant, was on hand to greet him as the carriage drew to a halt outside his London lodgings. Chauvelin felt the other man's small, dark eyes trying to read his features as the door was opened and he stepped down.

"You were gone a while," the grudging lackey observed, slamming the carriage door and then darting ahead to admit Chauvelin into the entrance of the grand townhouse. "I thought you were only going to deliver your message?"

Sliding a warning look at Desgas, Chauvelin passed through into the building. He would neither defend his actions or attempt to prove himself to this base individual assigned as his secretary and unofficial bodyguard. "Diplomatic relations, Desgas. Although I anticipate imminent war between our own fair land and this sceptered isle, I would never abandon my sense of decorum by stalking out of a minister's home."

"Right, citizen," followed Desgas' automatic response. "And your good friend, _La_ _St Just_?"

"What about her?" Chauvelin snapped. "You are asking a lot of questions, what is my business to you?"

Desgas shrugged, a loathsome smirk twitching at his mouth. Chauvelin huffed an impatient sigh, and quickened his pace up the marble staircase. He hated that the common man, of which this uneducated, wind-up soldier stumping along behind him was a prime example, could now dare to claim equality; rights were one thing – every human being should at least be given the chance to prove his worth – but of course the general rabble of France had taken it all too far. Man was not equal, and never would be. Chauvelin only had respect for those who measured well against his own standards: not breeding, but civility; not education, but intelligence; not strength, but endurance.

"Forgive my insolence, _citoyen_," Desgas bowed, scuffing along the landing to admit Chauvelin into his apartments. "Do we still start for Calais tomorrow?"

Blocking the doorway with one hand upon the latch, Chauvelin turned to his subordinate. "We leave early for Dover, as planned," he confirmed, struggling to maintain his usual composure before Desgas. It was too early in the game, and there were too many variables to yet be guaranteed of success: his quarry, though now known to him by name, was still an unfamiliar quantity.

Chauvelin had sat in Grenville's supper-room, feigning sleep and waiting – anticipating, thinking – until only one answer had been left to him. The solution had been a baffling one, and Chauvelin's ego had not quite wanted to admit to it at first; but he would bank on his instincts, which had not failed him yet, and if Marguerite St. Just's over-tall and indolent spouse should journey to France this day or the next, he would act accordingly.

With the shadow of a smile flitting over his lips, Chauvelin entered his rooms and made to close the door in Desgas' face, but the other man was stronger if not faster.

"She was willing, then?" A lamp mounted on the wall twisted his features into a leer. "Your words, not mine."

Chauvelin narrowed his eyes, and a shudder of disgust tensed the muscles in his neck and shoulders. He had known the very minute his angry words had left his mouth that he would regret sharing his thoughts with such a man, but the need to vent his spleen had made him quite irrational.

"She had little choice," he admitted, "if she were to save her brother."

"And has she?" Desgas asked quickly. "Saved him?"

"Ah!" Chauvelin gave a mirthless laugh, clapping a hand on the other man's shoulder. "Has she paid the price? I asked of her a small service in the name of her country – the land and the republic that she forfeit so readily at the merest hint of toil, of sacrifice. She said no. But everybody has their weaknesses, Desgas."

"He's pathetic, that brother of hers," Desgas growled, moving back over the threshold with Chauvelin still gripping his arm. The cold glint in those sharp eyes could serve as a goad to the belligerent factotum, himself keen to lay hands on the young lawyer should his sister fail, but also make him slightly anxious for his own safety. He knew how to handle men who used muscle and arrogance to get their way, but the subtle tricks and vicious tempers of gentlemen bullies made men like Chauvelin dangerous in their unpredictability. Desgas let himself be steered back into the hallway. "Nothing to him – no conviction, no backbone. _He_ wouldn't fight for his country. Look at him now, hiding like a rat in a hole!"

"But we know which hole, don't we?" Chauvelin replied archly.

Desgas snorted. "Goodnight, citizen!"

"Citizen!"

After closing and bolting the door, Armand Chauvelin dusted his hands together, wiping fingers against palms as if something objectionable remained. The shifting of his reflection in an oval mirror hung by the doorway caught his eye, and he raised his light-eyed stare to take in the crease of disgust on his face. Neat, dark brown hair with the first dusting of grey at the temples; pale, pinched features which would once have suggested a man of breeding; thin, cold lips quick to blanch with the torment of suppressed emotion; and eyes – Chauvelin broke contact with his own reverse image, ashamed that he had even noticed himself. Men like Armand St Just appreciated their own appearance; men like Sir Percy Blakeney, Bt.

In the mirror, Chauvelin's dark brows pulled in, his high forehead tightening with concentration: exactly what type of man _was_ Blakeney? The affected baronet had come to matter in increasing degrees to the accredited agent: an English aristocrat on French soil, unaware or disregarding of the social upheaval about him; an unexpected suitor paying court to one of the city's brightest talents; and then their impulsive marriage, making of Marguerite St Just a traitor and _émigré_, as well as robbing the fledgling republic of its mascot. And still the man's continued interference upon Chauvelin's arrival in England, not to mention his incredible role in the treasonous activities of the Scarlet Pimpernel. Everywhere and every time, he encountered the Englishman, with his insolent, lazy manner, fashionable attire and drawling speech. Chauvelin resented his very existence – what right did he have to meddle in French affairs, aiding _émigrés_ and marrying a daughter of the nation?

Blakeney's marriage to Marguerite was now symbolic to Chauvelin of more recent revelations: he had lied to her, stealing her from a more suitable match with a Republican patriot, just as, Chauvelin had to admit, he had so ably hidden his intentions from the French government and its agencies. And she was still blind to her husband's duplicity, locked out of his deepest secret as well as his heart. Chauvelin remembered her words on the cliff tops of Dover, as they had stood together outside that provincial watering hole: "Idyllic follies never last," she had confessed. How like her, to fall in love with a dream too easily disturbed by reality; he realised now that she had embraced republicanism in much the same way, cleaving to the theories of Rousseau and Mirabeau, only to blanch at the methods put into action by men such as Danton, Marat and Robespierre. Chauvelin had believed that she had felt her devotion wholeheartedly, as had her brother and all the young disciples, but she could not match word with deed when it mattered. St Cyr had been a promising gesture, but her desperate scramble to save his family at the last minute belied her true intentions.

He dropped down onto the edge of the couch, with its creaking frame and faint odour of mildew, and heaved a frustrated sigh; he was so near triumph, a victory for himself and his country, yet he could not feel wholly satisfied. A ridiculous young woman and her estranged husband still worried him; he wanted to save her, 'restore' her to France – and hurt, perhaps kill, him for his interference.

Pushing hands against knees, Chauvelin rose to his feet again, unable to sit and rest. Long, bony fingers reaching into his waistcoat pocket, he stepped confidently through the gloom towards a polished escritoire by the window. In the dim light from a streetlamp outside, he produced a small key on a tricolour ribbon and unlocked a document drawer beneath the desk. His hands stirred and lifted numerous official papers bearing the stamp and seal of the Republican government of France, before settling with tender reverence upon a slim glass frame. Had Desgas been present to witness his fellow _citoyen_ at this moment, Chauvelin's reputation of ruthless obsession, of cold-hearted devotion to a singular cause, would have been dashed forever, and his stranglehold of fear broken. Smaller still in stature as he stooped over the drawer, Armand Chauvelin gave another sigh, this of infinite sorrow and longing, and lifted the frame in the cradle of his hands towards the window.


	3. Fleur

She had hair of pale gold, flowing over her shoulders like a skein of silk, and tender blue eyes. Beautiful and generous and honest, Fleur had chanced into his life, brightening his serious youth with her laughter and affection, before leaving him behind as a shattered widower, with only a baby daughter to prove that their brief romance had been real. He had surrendered his title and noble heritage because she had offered him more, and then found that he could not return to a lie after her death; indeed, the old ways had repulsed him, and for a long time he had hidden in the south with his memories. Only a battle with his own demons had woken him from that enforced torpor ; his heart had been torn between the soothing denial of life outside Lou Mas – wherein housekeeper and nurse Louise would bring to him his daughter, as fresh and innocent as her mother, like a kiss from the past – and the stirring voice of his country in revolution. Ambition and duty had conquered love.

Fleurette was now sixteen, and he held her image in his mind much as he carried her mother's portrait; Lou Mas was a refuge from the grind and independence of Paris, but he never trusted himself to stay too long – a gift for his daughter, a check on Louise, and he was back to his solitary residence on the Rue Dupuy, restored to his seat of power within the new order of France. Fleurette had been his catalyst into action, after all, and he could do more for her in Paris than watching her blossom day by day in their little cottage by the river.

When he had married Fleur, he had done so with a heavy heart; his vow had been true, but something within him had bristled at her romantic nature and ordinary background. Had she loved before, in her native Marseilles? Had her parents, a farmer and his wife, instilled in her the importance of virtue and honour? She was so young, and yet so wise, understanding his solemn moods and unspoken fears – could he really have been the first to claim her? After her death, he had hated himself for tarnishing her goodness and tainting their first happiness, but those doubts would not be gainsaid. And then the reason, the explanation, came to him – it was _in him_ to suspect any man or woman without a title or respectable lineage, _in him_ to listen when society belittled his union before God with a _paysanne_. _He_ had judged himself, not those from whom he had cut all ties; he had looked at his wife, and thought in his soul that she was inferior. Fleur was caring and forgiving, but that one black seed of doubt had taken root in his heart – and yet he had not planted it.

For this, he neglected his daughter; for this, he would do whatever was necessary: Fleurette would not grow up confined to one rigid sphere of selection, as he had done, or discover that the heart of her country was staggered according to money and birth. Chauvelin would not let his daughter surrender her identity for a false ideal or a step up the ladder, as Marguerite St Just had done – he would have her die at his own hands before she became the tool of an arrogant, duplicitous manipulator such as Blakeney. Tears of regret, such as he had seen in the _citoyenne_'s eyes when he had spoken to her of the fatherland in danger, would not blind Fleurette's blue eyes when she thought of her marriage.

Touching a finger to the face in the portrait, Chauvelin's thoughts returned to the unhappy _ciotyenne_ : had she turned her back on France, a country that had allowed her to rise and would have taken her so much further, merely to stagnate on the lowest rung of the English peerage? As Lady Blakeney, the exiled wife of a baronet, she had suffered the insult of being cut by the _ci-devant_ Comtesse de Tournay; it had taken the spirit of Marguerite St Just to fight back tonight, using her new connections to defeat the broken aristocrat's stubborn pride. Chauvelin had enjoyed observing the flash in those familiar blue eyes as the French actress triumphed over the haughty noblewoman; personal vanity and national pride were stirred in the accredited agent at this display, but his interest was fleeting. Marguerite Blakeney was a lonely, isolated attraction in a foreign city, still cleaving to the unconditional love of her brother because she did not understand her husband. What was it she had said of St Just – "the only being who has loved me truly and constantly"? He almost pitied her; she wore a spray of red gems in her hair, no doubt _a la Scarlet Pimpernel_, but did not know that the phantom she worshipped and the man she had married were one and the same. It was a hopeless situation, but one of her own making.

Locking the drawer, after carefully replacing the loved one's image, Chauvelin looked out upon the dank London street. He wanted to be far away from this cold, dull, conservative land – and now, with the help of his former compatriot, he had all he had come for. Let the lady look to herself; when the Scarlet Pimpernel made his next move, wherever that might take him, Chauvelin would be at his heels.


	4. Lou Mas

_Lou Mas_

"No, Fleurette," the housekeeper instructed, reaching out with a strong arm to take hold of the girl's wrist before she could follow her father. "Let's leave him be, and get these dishes swept up."

"He has only gone to the stream, Louise, I can see him," Fleurette protested, but the old housekeeper held firm to her charge's slender arm. Sighing, Fleurette closed the door after her father's hasty departure and turned to view the destruction that lay about the usually tidy cottage.

It was so unlike Bibi to fly into a rage like that, especially around his daughter; Fleurette felt a little sad that even her loving arms and the peace of Lou Mas were not enough to cheer him this time. He always seemed to bring a measure of the authority and hectic pace of his life in Paris back with him, his shoulders rigid and his slight figure stooped under the weight of his official burden, when he returned home; there would be weary lines and dark circles around his light eyes, and his brow and lips would be etched into a seemingly permanent frown. Fleurette lived for her father's visits, however, and it usually only took her first excited, cheerful greeting upon the old stone bridge, where she would run into his waiting embrace and kiss away the creases upon his face, to at least return him to some semblance of his old self. And after a day or two in her light, pleasant company, 'Citizen Armand' would ease into the comforting role of 'Bibi', and become devoted to his only daughter once again.

Fleurette could not explain what had gone wrong with this visit. Perhaps it was because she hadn't known he was coming, and so had missed their time-honoured reunion on the bridge; instead, he had just appeared on the doorstep after dinner one day, wet from the rain and dishevelled after nearly a week's constant travel. She had been delighted at the surprise, and old Louise had rushed around to fix up a meal and prepare him some dry clothes, but he had remained silent and brooding all evening; his shoulders were tense beneath her embrace, and when she kissed his cheek, he had actually flinched from the contact. Two days later, and it was as if a stranger had come in his place – a perfect copy, with perhaps a little more grey in his hair, and yet somehow changed from the 'Bibi' she had kissed farewell at Laragne only a few months before. This man did not smile at her familiar tales, would not listen to her news and could not speak of his own, and seemed to be far away whenever she looked at him; when she reached for his cold hands, he would roughly snatch his fingers away from her grasp, and if she knelt beside his chair to rest her head against his lap, he would no longer stroke her hair but instead tell her to get up off the dirty floor.

Now Fleurette was as miserable as he, and feeling close to tears as she peered out of the window to watch him standing motionless, his head bowed and hands clasped behind his back, down by the stream.

"Get the broom, Fleurette," Louise snapped, throwing the shattered pieces of her mother's old meat platter into the pail.

Turning sadly away from the window, Fleurette did as she was told and picked her way across to the cupboard for the brush, wondering to herself if her father would be angrier still when he realised that he would have to replace the expensive dishes he had swept from the table in his outburst.

Some little distance away, lost in the agonies of his own doubts and fears, stood the centre of Fleurette's thoughts. Deaf to the soothing whisper of the water and the birdsong from the trees, blind to the recharged beauty of the landscape after the rains, and numb to the fresh breeze against his stony face, all that Armand Chauvelin could see was the haunted gaze of a woman's large blue eyes, and only the echo of a cheerful if tuneless voice singing 'God save the King' now sounded in his brain. His heart, pounding in his chest, ached for the familiar comforts he had returned to this very place in search of, and yet he was denied solace. He couldn't meet his daughter's questing glances without seeing his failure writ upon her face, and he was disgusted with the cowardice he had shown by fleeing from defeat.

Unconsciously, he broke the stiff, clammy lacing of his fingers behind him and drew one hand forward to reach into the pocket of his coat. Without looking, he brushed his fingertips along the feathered, crumpled edge of a folded piece of paper there, and then just as neatly retracted his hand and locked his wandering fingers behind his back. It was still there, then; it was still a fact that he had let his elusive counterpart slip through those very same fingers, whilst he chased the folly of his own arrogance in the opposite direction along the coast of Calais. It had all seemed so certain, so easy – he, Chauvelin, had thought himself the stronger in this challenge of wits, and the Englishman should have been no match at all.

But for the woman, but for his men, but for his own absolute determination not to lose and his zeal to bring down this one man – the glory of capturing the most dangerous enemy of France and delivering him to justice in Paris would have belonged to Citizen Armand Chauvelin.

Biting down on the hysterical anger rising in his throat, Chauvelin pressed his eyes closed and drove his nails into the backs of his hands as he was transported in his mind back to that cliff top in Calais a week ago – when he had held the very life of his quarry in his hands, with the power to call off his soldiers or drive them on to kill a poor defenceless old peddler with their beatings. The whole, mad, perfect irony of the situation was that of course the Jewish merchant had been none other than Sir Percy Blakeney, Bt., and yet Chauvelin had not recognised him – had not heeded the marked stoop of the man's spine that he had warned his guard to look out for, or taken the time to search beyond the grime and false hair of his disguise to note those smirking lips and those lazy, laughing blue eyes – _morbleu_! – blue eyes on such a creature as that loathsome peasant! Had he possessed half the sense he had once credited himself with, he should have seen through such an obvious ruse in an instant.

"Damn him, damn her, damn them both," Chauvelin growled through clenched teeth, driving his heel into the crumbling soil at his feet with every curse.

He supposed they were back in England now, and he derived some little satisfaction from imagining the tension between them – a union of opposites like that could not be forged by throwing a stubborn man and an impulsive woman on each other's mercy. Chauvelin had to laugh at that thought, hurting his throat with the force of his jagged rasps: he had left the prostrate form of Marguerite Blakeney in the care of her own husband, a 'gallant defender of her fair person' indeed! And in tossing away one precious hostage, a traitor and émigré in her own right, to chase after a greater prize, he had denied himself the consolation of seeing his former compatriot's blood spill on French soil. For there was now no question in Chauvelin's mind as to her complicity in that final blunder, or to the deserved punishment of such reckless interference –

"Bibi!"

Chauvelin started, his foot sliding in the soft ground as he turned to look over his shoulder. Something in the hollow of his chest gave a sickening lurch as he watched his daughter stepping lightly through the grass towards him, pulling a mantle about her shoulders and her fair hair. She threw a surreptitious glance at the kitchen window just before skirting down to the stream, and Chauvelin's preoccupied mind instantly flashed back to Marguerite Blakeney's shadowy dash towards the fisherman's hut in Calais.

"Go inside, Fleurette!" he called. She stopped short three or four paces away.

"But Bibi!" she protested, holding out a hand to him.

"Go inside, please," he told her sadly. "Apologise to Louise for me. Tell her I shall replace the dishes that were broken."

"Mother's platter was smashed to pieces," she informed him sombrely.

Chauvelin sighed, and looked back at the burbling water. "I shall buy another."

"I saved a piece of the border," Fleurette continued. "Here, look. It has the little flowers on that you told me Mother liked so."

Closing his eyes, Chauvelin gave a small shake of his head. "If it pleases you. But now, please – go back inside."

"I will," she said softly, and he traced the whisper of her slow progress without once looking back. When he heard the door creak open and then snick shut, Chauvelin sank wearily to his knees beside the stream. He drove his fingers into the sodden ground at either side of him, and pulled out two handfuls of mud.

How could he have been so hasty to misjudge Blakeney and his wife? Hiding behind a contemptuous _nom de guerre_ and the heightened superstitious fears of popular imagination, the Pimpernel had seemed almost invincible as he challenged and mocked the republican government that Chauvelin represented, leaving scraps of childish verse in place of those condemned to death as traitors; as Sir Percy Blakeney, Baronet, however, he was never so human. All it should have taken to restore the balance was to follow one man across the Channel, and intercept him in the middle of yet another interfering enterprise – no power, whether diplomatic or supernatural, could have saved Blakeney and his accomplices in such a situation.

And Lady Blakeney! He had manipulated a sister's fierce love for her brother, challenging the pride that lay so very close beneath the surface of her defiant beauty, only to dismiss her when she had served her purpose, believing that she would do nought to rectify the wrong he had forced her into committing. His encounter with the émigré actress in Dover had been a fortuitous coincidence, but his playing of her emotions had been neatly planned – for St Just's sake she had once sent a man to his death, and isolated from all she knew in a foreign land, with a husband in name only whom she could not trust, Chauvelin knew she would do so again. He had been ready to lie, but St Just had once again signed his own folly, linking himself to the Pimpernel, and then Lady Blakeney was irretrievably bound to his schemes.

_Somebody rushing to the hut ahead of him – seeking sanctuary or sounding the alarm? – pulling the figure down with a handful of skirts – a woman? Here? Who? Her delicate features beneath his rough, searching fingers; soft skin chilled by the wind but burning with energy and spirit. Light breaths upon his fingertips, a shiver tensing the muscles beneath her skin as he makes sure of a thought which has just occurred to him. It is this instinctive recoil from his touch which confirms what he might have missed in the contours of her narrow nose or the pout of her lips – that here is Lady Blakeney, nee Marguerite St Just, returned to the country of her birth after a disappointing new life in England. Why? Has her husband's mask slipped from her own eyes, or is she out to save her brother? With mocking gallantry, he presses his lips to her cold fingers. Slender wrists gripped tightly, her natural perfume forcing him to inhale as he leans to whisper: 'What is he to you?' _

A woman's prerogative; he had been sure of her love for St Just, but unaware of how little it would take to send her into the arms of her husband. She had even confessed before him her romantic admiration for the Pimpernel, and it now seemed pathetically obvious what such a passionate woman would do upon learning that she had possessed her 'hero of old' all along – but he had not recognised the threat when it counted, in London and again in Calais, and Lady Blakeney had redeemed her husband's love and saved the Pimpernel.

Chauvelin stared at the clinging mass of mud in his palms, opening and closing his fingers to fracture and reform the sandy mixture, before emptying his hands into the water. The clear stream, rippling over stones and through reeds, turned murky as he disturbed its bed with his childish attack, but gradually the mushrooming clouds began to dissolve and settle. He waited patiently for the water to run clear again before rising stiffly to his feet. His hands were wet, the cuffs of his plain shirt stained with mud and his knees caked with a layer of gritty sludge, but Chauvelin saw only the pure stream glinting in the cold winter light.

To find such clarity in the future – would he again meet Lady Blakeney in the more appropriate setting of a London assembly room or a gilded box at the opera, and find her radiant in jewels and furs, instead of wilting in the moonlight under the punishment of fate? It were inevitable, he decided – she would be at her husband's side when the opportunity arose for him to avenge his defeat and challenge the audacity of the Pimpernel to a fair match, whereupon all three would play again this mortal game of chance.


End file.
